Too Long; Didn't Read
In the 1970s the introduction of the microcomputer sparked a sea change in computing experiences. Up to that point, human-machine interaction had been shaped by the mainframe: one “big iron” machine kept in a fixed, central<em> </em>location and shared across many users. But then the microcomputer changed everything: computing became <em>personal</em>, powered by smaller and cheaper machines that could now be kept <em>close at hand</em> and used <em>one-on-one</em>.